


Keep Breathing

by multi_faceted_obsessional



Category: Bodyguard (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:48:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21901234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/multi_faceted_obsessional/pseuds/multi_faceted_obsessional
Summary: For Terry McKay - part of LavenderBudd Fic Exchange.Julia lives, and David waits.
Relationships: David Budd/Julia Montague, Past David/Vicky
Comments: 9
Kudos: 72
Collections: LavenderBudd Fic Exchange





	Keep Breathing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TerryMcKay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerryMcKay/gifts).



Keep Breathing

Title comes from the Ingrid Michaelson song. 

UMMM so… this has sparked too many ideas, which means that I’ve been trying to write three different fics at once. The others were a) too plot heavy for me to do them justice in this timeframe, or b) not angsty enough. Still not sure this is angsty enough, but hopefully this fits the prompt. Happy Holidays, Terry McKay!

David watches her chest rise and fall, willing himself not to blink, as if she might slip away in the mili-second that his eyes are closed.

She is pale, and her hand is cold - so cold that if it wasn’t for the snap hiss, and the slow “bip, bip, bip” of the machines, he might think that she has already gone. The touch of her skin against his feels so different from the warm, steady hand that squeezed his with such determination only seven hours ago.

There is a murmur of voices, one male, one female, outside the door, and he leans down, brushing his lips to her knuckles with a whispered “sorry, love, I have to go”, pressing himself flat against the wall, as if they won’t notice him when they enter the room.

It’s Julia’s mother, he realises, as the woman steps into the pale moonlight. She has Julia’s cheekbones (or Julia has hers, technically), and her poise, but he can only see her profile, until suddenly, she has turned to look him dead in the eye.

“Are you going to lurk there all night?”

David’s heart feels like it is in a vice - and he can feel himself becoming lightheaded, his vision narrowing to a point, everything else fuzzy around the edges. He can hear his blood pulsing, and it is so loud in the silence that he wonders if she can hear it too. 

The older woman appears in front of him, close, too close, and she has Julia’s eyes too. It’s _that_ which finally breaks the dam, and he drops to his knees, curling up in a ball of sobs, and snot, and incoherent mumbling into the palms that cover his face. The older woman crouches next to him, and places her hand over his, tugging one hand away from his face. “You’re the man Roger was shouting at…” She tilts her head, studies him for a moment. His heart is in his throat, and the idea that she might send him away is—

“I never really liked Roger anyway,” Her voice is lilting, with a gentle musicality to it, that is nothing like the hard edged huskiness he had expected from her severe bun and piercing stare.

He cannot say anything - that weight pressing down has robbed him of his breath and his sense - and what would he say if he could speak?

“Alright. You stay there.” 

David looks up her; his vision is still blurry, and his head feels like he’s spent all night drinking at a rock concert, his ears ringing, but he can almost feel the sympathy in her voice. “Ma’am?”

“Oh, he speaks!”

“Why haven’t you asked me to leave?”

“Would you go if I did?” She retorts, an eyebrow arched, and clearly Julia gets her sass from this woman too; David snorts, and shakes his head. “No, I don’t suppose I would.” 

“Then perhaps we should both be intruders together.”

“Ma’am?” 

“Visiting hours apply to me too, so they tell me, but then you can’t out-stubborn a Montague.” 

“Aye, that you can’t.” David remembers - three nights ago, or was it four - Julia dozing with her head resting on her ministerial red box, grumbling slapping away his hands as he tried to lift her into his arms and into the bed, “not finished yet”, until he distracted her with a kiss that stole her breath, and his too. He reddened under Mrs Montague’s gaze; her eyes warm and knowing.

“Are you a… friend?”

David considers the woman lying on the bed. It has barely been a month since they met, and she has burrowed herself so deep within him that he’s not sure where he ends and she begins, but “I don’t think that she’d call me that, no…”

“But you care for her?” She presses, and like Julia, she knows exactly where to prod, “You love her?”

“I…” David exhales. Everything about Julia Montague is confusing, other than _that_. “Aye. But I… we’re not exactly… I don’t know what we are.” 

“The best ones usually are the ones that start out that way. Her father was the most infernal man, spent about three months skirting around it before he even asked me to dance.” She smiles, wistful, eyes looking off into the distance, and he feels his heart ache in sympathy for this woman. “My father in law was Scottish, had the most magnificent Glaswegian accent. I always had a weakness for that accent. My husband grew up in York, so he didn’t share it, which I always thought was a shame,” She adds, and smirks. 

“My father was Scottish, you know?”

He had been running his fingertip up and down her ribcage; he stopped, leant forward and pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “Oh?” 

She turned in his arms, and nodded. “His parents were both from the Lowlands - his father was from Glasgow, his mother from a village in Dunbartonshire, Old Kilpatrick, I think it was called. He never took me there; by the time I was born, most of the family was in Glasgow, and I don’t even think we visited Glasgow more than twice. His parents moved to [York] when my father was four; he didn’t sound very Scottish, but he was always so proud of his heritage.”

He propped himself up on his elbow, smiling down at her. He was torn between staring at her eyes, which were sparkling with mirth, in a way that he alone was permitted to witness, and her mouth - pulled into an adorable frown, concentrated, every now and then her teeth sneaking out to tug on her upper lip. She looked up, and he realised he has taken too long to respond. He hadn’t been aware that he was supposed to; content to listen to the sound of her voice, watch the flickers of warmth flit across her face at the thought of her long dead father. “What was he like?”

“My father?” 

“Aye.”

“Oh… he was warm, and funny. Used to throw me up in the air and dangle me upside down. I was always laughing when I was around him. Mother was always little bit more… reserved. Proper. Still is, really, but she has mellowed a bit with age.” 

“Tory?”

“Of course.” Julia smirked, and tucked herself against his chest, tilting her head to stare up at him. “What about your parents?” 

“Definitely not Tories.” He shot back, and she laughed. Every time she laughed, he was struck with the need to make her laugh every day for the rest of his life - a need so deep and intense that he had to look away. She reached out and stroked her fingertips along his jaw, bringing him back to her. “Where did you go?”

“Just thinking about my folks. They’d hate this.”

“And me?”

“Probably.” He smiled, and the thought didn’t bother him in the way that he might have expected it to. She nuzzled his neck, and no, it really didn’t bother him at all.

//  
The morning after it happens, he knows he cannot continue to dodge Craddock, still less Sharma and Rayburn. So he goes to see Craddock first; she orders him to report to Sharma and Rayburn, “and take the bloody week off, David.”

He gives his statement - keeps it mostly factual, occasionally bursting into rage at the questions, the way that they focus on the briefcase, asking so many times until everything blurs together, despite his training. He remembers a stack of paper, two pens, a Parliamentary pass, and nothing else. Did he lift the paper? He can’t remember, although he knows he must have. Did he feel the bottom of the briefcase? He can’t remember, although he knows his training told him that he should. Did he see anything in Tahir’s behaviour that suggested he was a threat? He can remember that the bloke looked like he was about to shit himself, but he can’t remember thinking that was anything to worry about. What did you miss? Goes unspoken, but he hears it anyway. It is all that he hears, round and round in his head quieting only when her hand is in his and he remembers that she is still - impossibly - alive.

If not for Frances Montague, the indomitable, who shoes Roger away with a gentle pat on the shoulder as she sees David turn into a caged animal at the sight of him, he knows he would have thrown a punch or two. She smiles at him over the top of her newspaper, the Telegraph, of course. “There’s some history there that I’d like to hear about.” It sounds like a request, but it isn’t, and he can’t see why Julia would describe her mother as reserved, unless it means something else among the upper classes. 

“We’ve had words.” He cannot help the way his jaw clenches and his hands curl into fists. He unclenches, releasing the tension between his palms. 

He can see her file away that tidbit in the way that her mouth twitches up a little - just like Julia when she thinks she has discovered something that she can use later.

After a moment of him pacing back and forth across the room, she lets out a loud sigh, and sets aside her newspaper. “There’s a very interesting article that I’m trying to read but your pacing is making it impossible to think. What’s wrong?”

“They think I…” David trails off; he can’t tell her what they think. She will bar him from the room, cut him off from Julia, and… 

He’s right back there again - the dessert, the scorching heat, sweat dripping between his eyes - and then Frances Montague’s hand is on his arm, her touch tentative, and he jumps. Backwards, fortunately; she startles, but doesn’t say anything. “You’re not alright, are you?” 

“I… uh… PTSD, so they tell me.”

“They?”

“My boss. The counter terrorism officers investigating the bombing. My wife.”

“Your wife?” Frances draws back, a frown upon her lips, and a hot ball of shame rises in his chest. “We’re… separated. I… it was too much for her, and I…”

“Wouldn’t get help?” Frances interjects, and it is a little sharper, her gaze a little warier, and he can see her calculate the distance between them, and between her and the door. He looks down at his hands, and for a moment he can see them around Julia’s neck, feel her panic in the pulse pounding underneath his fingertips, her fragility, and it brings the bile up to the back of his throat. 

“If you want me to leave, I’ll…” David lets it hang in the air; he will leave, but he doesn’t know what he will do afterwards, if he can’t see her, make sure that she is still breathing. He exhales, before he spirals further, and draws himself away from Frances, flattening himself against the wall farthest from her.

“I’m not frightened of you, David, and I am not asking you to go.” She says, and it is gentle and kind, and it is those words, the echo of Julia’s _I want you by my side_ , that bring tears to his eyes. He nods. “Thank you.”

“I get the feeling my daughter would not be very happy with me if she finds out I sent you away.” There is a hint of warning, now, in that steely tone, and the serious expression, and David realises where Julia got it from - _gets_ it from. 

“I’m not sure if that’s true; I’m the reason she’s here.”

“Unless you planted that bomb, then you most certainly are not,” Frances counters, and her tone is so completely final that he wonders how she can have such faith in him. Her gaze is warm, and it feels like the walls are closing in on him; he rises and leaves the hospital room.

“David - where are you going?”

_“You really don’t regret voting for the war?”_

_“Are we really going to go over this again, David?” Her tone was sharp, but underneath it was a tiredness that he hadn’t heard from her before._

_“Do you regret anything?” He hadn’t meant to be quite so bullish; she is naked and vulnerable, and he’s blundering in like a tank. She blinks up at him._

_“What a ridiculous question, David. I’m not a monster,” She exhaled, and he saw that her hands were shaking, whether with rage or something worse, he couldn’t tell. He looked away._

_“I wasn’t…” He trailed off, because of course he was saying that. Of course he had thought that before he knew her. “Sorry.”_

_She exhaled, tensing up against him. Then his hand curled around her hip, gentle, careful, and she shifted back, to press against him. He could almost hear her frown, and the exasperation bled through into her voice the way that it had when she’d coined him “David-slash-Dave”._

_“Of course I regret things. Too many to count. I’ve made decisions in politics that I have thought were right and they have turned out to be horribly wrong. I made decisions and missteps as a barrister that meant innocent people went down, and I have to live with that.”_

_“Is that worse?”_

_“Is what worse?” Her voice was sharp - the voice of someone right at the end of their tether, and he rubs a circle between her shoulder blades, until she relaxes - only a little, but enough - under his touch._

_“Someone innocent going down than someone guilty getting away with it.”_

_“Yes, of course,” She was so ferocious that it surprised him, although perhaps it shouldn’t have. “I wouldn’t be a defence barrister if I had thought anything different.” She folded her arms across her chest, pinning him with a glare that told him exactly how thin the ice was on which he was skating._

_He sighed. He couldn’t get anything right. He reached out, tangling his fingers with hers. “Sorry. I know that.” He pressed a kiss to the back of her hand. “Did you have a favourite client?”_

_“When I was at 23 Essex, I…_

_“What’s 23 Essex?”_

_“My old chambers.” She turned over, and she was far away, out of reach, a desperate melancholy in her eyes, and a flatness in her voice._

_“I once had a client - fifteen years old. Young, but somehow impossibly old, like the world was on his shoulders. Killed his father because he had been hurting his mother. He was stupid enough - young enough - to have told one of his friends about it a week before he did it. The CPS got his friend to testify - the poor boy was terrified, didn’t want to do it, but... Anyway, we’d been doing alright before that, but there was no coming back from that… he got sent down for twenty years. Even the CPS didn’t expect him to go down for that long; it was…” She shifted, eyes a little lost, and her breath hitched in the back of her throat. “No matter how many years pass, I will never get over that boy and his face as they sent him down.”_

_“What happened to him?” David asked, although he thought that he might already know the answer from the way that her shoulders shook._

_“He took his own life seven years in. Waited until he heard his sister had graduated university before he did it - didn’t want to upset her before her finals, the note said. She could make something of her life, he said. She did - Emily was one of my best pupils.” She exhaled, and then shook her head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to… kill the mood.”_

_David reached out, bringing her flush against his chest. “Don’t apologise, [love]. I asked. I want to… get to know you better.”_

_He winced as soon as the words left his mouth; she laughed, deep and throaty, honest, the laugh half caught in her throat._

_“Oh, well in that case, Sergeant Budd, by all means, let’s… get to know each other better.”_

///

Sharma and Rayburn find him just outside the hospital, pacing back and forth, trying to decide if she is safer with or without him there, the tap-tap of bullets hitting metal screaming in his head. Sharma reads him his rights - and it’s the words _attempted murder of Julia Montague_ that makes him feel like emptying the contents of his stomach - little that they are - onto the pavement.

When they get into the interrogation, they waste no time. “We’ve identified the man who tried to kill Julia Montague at Thornton Circus. His name was Andy Apsted.” 

Sharma’s eyes bore a hole into his head, and Rayburn’s soft sympathy is almost worse. He can feel his entire world collapsing around him, and he buries his head in his hands. He is aware that this is all but an admission of guilt, but he cannot think what exactly he is supposed to say. How he can explain himself. 

He is hollowed out from days without sleep, and months of that constant awareness, the stench of sweat and shit and cordite, the taste of copper in his mouth and the itch of the sand against his skin. If he had a gun, he thinks that he might swallow it, if not for Julia - and what she will think of him if he does. 

Everything feels heavy, and it is only when Rayburn reaches across the table to place a gentle palm upon his arm that he snaps back. He jerks upright, and then mutters a quiet, “sorry”. 

“David - we know that you can’t have done this alone. If you tell us who else was involved then we might be able to see what we can do about mitigation…” Rayburn is staring at him like he’s some sort of caged animal, and he pulls his shoulders down, willing his heart to stop pounding against his chest.

“I… I didn’t. I knew what it would look like; I thought maybe if I kept quiet, I could figure out what was happening and why… and who was behind the leak. My kids… Thornton Circus… it’s got to be connected, and I… thought it would be better if I figured it out first.” 

Sharma and Rayburn glance at each other; Sharma doesn’t bother to hide the lift of his eyebrows. They must have worked together a while, because a message passes between them that he doesn’t understand. “I didn’t do this. I wouldn’t. I… my job is all I have and I wouldn’t put it in jeopardy, and then I…” _fell in love with her_ nearly trips off his tongue, but that is for her alone, and he clamps his mouth shut.

“You…?” Rayburn leans forward, and it’s the oldest trick in the book. Behave like you’re the suspect’s friend. He feels his hackles rise, and he slams his palms on the table. “I had _nothing_ to do with this. It’s Sampson or it’s the security services or it’s a terrorist group. It’s not one person - and she’s still in danger.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know anything, but there’s no way that this was just one person. Even if you don’t believe me that I wasn’t involved, you know that I’m right. How did Andy even know she was going to be there? How did he get hold of a rifle like that? He doesn’t have any money. How did Andy get into that building? He must have got past security somehow.”

Rayburn leans forward, and there’s just enough interest in her eyes, that he thinks she might be his only shot. He exhales, and takes the chance. 

“Please. I didn’t do this.” 

“You’ve got to give us something more, David. If you really want us to believe you.” 

“I don’t have anything more. I’m sorry, Louise, but I just don’t know anything else.”

She exhales, nods to Sharma, and they both leave the room. He is all alone. 

///

They’re gone for hours. When the door opens again, it’s some baby faced bloke who doesn’t look like he’s seen a beat before in his life. He tells David to stand up; David does so, but his bladder strains and he realises it’s been five hours since he last had a piss. 

“I need to take a piss.”

“I’m taking you down to the cells, sir. There’s a toilet down there.”

As the door slides shut with a clang, he sits down, curling up on the bed. He should call Vicky, but she’ll only worry. She might even try and get him a solicitor and he knows that they can’t afford it - probably can’t get legal aid as together they probably make too much money (he snorts at that - bloody Tories). He stares up at the ceiling - counting the dots in the off white speckled ceiling tiles - and he tries to summon up the energy to feel anything. 

If she wakes up, she will know it was Andy who killed Terry, who tried to kill her, and even if she forgives him for that, for not knowing what to do in that desperate, confusing situation, he is certain that she will never forgive him for betraying her trust. He has lost her either way, but if she dies— the thought steals all of the air from his lungs, and his eyes burn. 

Eventually, he sleeps - waking every hour to the sound of scraping metal and screams of agony, to the sight of Andy’s burnt flesh and the deadness in his eyes, and he wonders if that is what he will become. He drifts off once more, and awakes to find Rayburn and Sharma standing over him. 

“Does the name Chanel Dyson mean anything to you?” 

He blinks the sleep out of his eyes, and pulls himself to his feet. “Is Julia… is the Home Secretary still alive?” The words burn the back of his throat, and he cannot hide the way that his hands are shaking.

“Could you answer the question, David,” Sharma shoots back. David shakes his head. “Not until you answer mine.”

“There’s no change in her condition.”

“Thank you.” He frowns. “Chanel was the Home Secretary’s assistant. She kicked up a fuss when she was fired, got in a fancy car - people carrier, being driven by a bloke who looked like he’d stab you as soon as look at you. Number plate is in my log book, which is in my desk. Why?” 

“Andy got into the building using a fake ID card for a shell company in the Caymans. It’s owned by a shell corporation owned by a man named Luke Aitken, as is a company that pays out tens of thousands of pounds in dividends to Chanel Dyson.”

David digs what’s left of his nails into his palms, and cannot understand how he and, perhaps, as punishment for not taking Chanel more seriously. “Who’s Luke Aitken?”

“A serious organised crime boss.”

“How would someone like that know how to find Andy?” David 

“Your mate Andy wasn’t exactly trying to hide his views,” Sharma retorts, and David drops his head, bile rising in his throat. “No, no he wasn’t.”

“But you didn’t take him seriously?”

David swallows the bile. It burns - and he knows that it should. “I… Andy was angry, and he hated her, hated all of them, but I thought… he was too unwell to follow through. ”

“Like you?” Rayburn is peering down at him, her eyes filled with too much empathy that it makes his stomach turn. “How did you manage to get past the psych evals?”

David is ten seconds away from punching the wall, until the sudden, creeping revulsion races up his spine. He stares at her, eyes wide, and he sees the precise moment when she reaches the same conclusion. “I… I always thought I was handling it, that they’d never realised because I wasn’t that bad, but what if…” 

“They knew after all.” Rayburn frowns, and turns and meets Sharma’s gaze. His eyes are just as wide, and he steps out of the cell. Rayburn hesitates and reaches out to pat David on the shoulder.

“Sit tight, yeah?”

Her words, and her queasy smile, should reassure him, but they manage only to fill his body with lead. He sits down on the bed. And waits.  
//

It’s another sixteen hours before he is let out of the cell. 

He wakes in a cold sweat, dreaming of sand, and Julia’s firm “I know you’ll never let anything bad happen to me” echoing between images of blood and fire, and he can taste the copper and feel the grains of sand. He turns over and lurches towards the foul smelling toilet, emptying what little is in his stomach into it. He sinks down, curling up into a ball beside it, slumped next to the wall. 

When the crack in the cell opens, he thinks it is the food, and he calls out, “I just want to know she’s alive—“ 

Sharma and Rayburn walk into his cell, and Rayburn’s eyes widen at the state of him. His face is blotchy, and his eyes are unfocused as he looks up at her. “We can do you one better. You’re free to go.”

“What?” 

“We arrested in Chanel Dyson, she wouldn’t say anything, but Aitken panicked and called his police contact - DSI Craddock. She’s in interrogation now.”

“I…” He rises, slowly, and falls back down again. Rayburn reaches out a hand to steady him. She nods to Sharma, who leaves. She crouches down in front of David, who blinks down at her, his head too foggy to focus. “David, I’m sorry for everything that’s happened to you. We couldn’t have found out who hurt the Home Secretary without you. But for your sake, and hers, I really think that you should speak to someone…”

“Yeah, sure,” He dismisses it, reflexively, even though he knows - now, more than ever - with the taste of blood still on his tongue, that he cannot cope with this on his own.

Louise sighs, and _who the fuck is she to be disappointed?_ She rises, and hesitates in the doorway. “There’s been no change in the Home Secretary’s condition. She’s still in the hospital; we’ve assigned some of our officers until we clear everyone under Craddock’s command. You’re not permitted to go near her in any official capacity - you’re still suspended.”

“In any _official_ capacity?” David asks, and Louise nods. “Yes. I assume you’ll find some _unofficial_ reason to be there.” There’s something that might be amusement hiding in her eyes, and he gives her a brief nod.

///

He calls Vicky first, as soon as he steps out into the early afternoon sunlight, which is so bright that his eyes sting, the rest of his possessions still in a plastic bag that he clutches in his other hands.

It’s Saturday, now, so he asks to speak to the kids, who want to hear all about his “trip”, until he tells them “it was just for work”, and they fade away, peeling off to watch whatever cartoons are on in the background. Vicky laughs, and then asks him, carefully, “are you ok?”

“Not really. But I think I will be. I’m sorry for everything I’ve put you through, Vick.”

She sighs, but it is with a gentleness in her voice that she replies, “I know, Dave.”

“I’m going to get help. I… I want to be a good Dad to the kids. And I don’t want to keep doing this to you, Vick.”

Her breath hitches, and he can hear her swallow, can imagine her pursing her lips. “That’s good, Dave. That’s really good. But you know that…”

“Yes. I do. I know that we’re… that I’m not good for you anymore.”

“It’s not that, Dave. We’re just… we’re not kids anymore. We’ve both changed, and that’s not… it’s no-one’s fault, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t love you or want you in our kids’ lives.” 

“Yeah.” He swallows, knows that she is being kind, knows that it isn’t them, that it’s _him_ , but that thought only pulls at his chest - doesn’t knock all of the air out of his lungs the way that it had before. Because it is also true that he is indelibly different now that he has known Julia’s skin, her touch, her laugh, her smile - the real one, just for him. “I need to go, Vick.”

“Are you…?” She trails off, and he’s not sure if even she knows what she is going to ask.

“I’m going to the hospital. I need to see Julia.”

“Dave, please be careful…” Vicky cautions, and she means well, so he doesn’t tell her that it’s too late for that, that Julia Montague has already burrowed herself underneath his skin, so deep that excising her will kill him. 

“Thanks Vick. I’ll speak to you later, ok? I’d love to see the kids when this has… blown over.”

“They’d love that, Dave. Take care,” It’s the warmest she’s sounded for months, and he thinks that it should hurt, but it doesn’t. For a brief moment, he wonders if this is acceptance.

“Hello David.” Frances greets him with a smile just outside the ward. Her warmth makes his heart stutter in his chest, and he doesn’t know what to say to this woman who might have saved his life.

“Hello Frances.”

She reaches up, places her hand against his cheek, and pats it, once, twice, before drawing back. “I’m glad you’re back.” 

He realises she doesn’t know, and he opens his mouth - to say what, he’s not sure. She carries on, “I felt her move, earlier. They tell me that it’s just a reflex, and I shouldn’t get my hopes up, but I think she might be waiting for you before she’ll open her eyes.”

The bottom drops out of his stomach, and he can barely breathe as he walks into the room. Frances whispers, “I’ll give you a moment”, and he nods, unable to express the gratitude that swells in his chest towards this woman - and what she has done for him. 

He takes a step, then another, towards Julia’s bed. He doesn’t know what to say to her, apart from “I’m so sorry.”. He says it over, and over, and finally, there is a raspy, “Honestly, David, would you shut up? All this apologising is giving me a headache.” 

His head snaps up at the raspy whisper from above him. 

He blinks at her, his heart in his mouth, and he can’t take his eyes off her as she cracks open her eyelids. She winces, the light so bright that it sends a stabbing pain through the centre of her forehead, and she scrunches her eyelids shut. She sucks in a breath, and then tries, once more, to open her eyes. He is watching her, holding his breath, his eyes filled with something that she has never seen before. She feels warm under his gaze, safe and solid, and she lifts her arm, a little, until pain lances through it like a lightning bolt. He reaches over and takes her right hand - the uninjured side - threading their fingers together. 

Her eyes widen as her mother walks in, and he can feel her start to pull away, but he grasps her fingers tighter, leaning down to kiss her knuckles. Frances does not bat an eyelid, merely leans forward and presses a kiss to her daughter’s forehead, her shoulders dropping, the weight lifting from them. “It’s about time, darling, you’ve missed…” She exhales, shakes her head. “Well, you’ve missed rather a lot, and David and I have been terribly worried about you.” 

Frances squeezes David’s shoulder, and then she brushes Julia’s hair out of her face, and the mother smiles, gentle and warm. “I’ll wait a few minutes before letting them know you’re awake. That should keep the vultures at bay.”

Julia laughs - and David cries, burying his head against her chest. Her fingers grip gently at the curls at the nape of his neck, and she leans forward, pressing her lips against his skin. For the first time since St Matthew’s, he can finally breathe again.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was angst, continuation of the story/ canon divergence, missing scenes
> 
> This was a lot of fun to write - not entirely sure I quite got there with the angst but apparently I'm not great at angst!


End file.
